Someone's gotta lose

wirius

Been seeing a few complaints about PvE scaling and guys, I'm here to tell you:

Someone's gotta lose.

Its a game of thousands of players. Now they try to bracket the tournaments accordingly so that you're around people of similar competitiveness, but sometimes you forget:

Someone's gotta lose.

If everyone could always grind up to the top covers, then people wouldn't consider it real competition. The value of the covers would go down. People would be less incentivised to pay money. As a result:

Someone's gotta lose.

Which means that only the BEST are going to win. If your roster is limited, if your time is limited, or if you don't spend as many resources as the other guy:

Sometimes that someone is you.

Copps

I think the biggest complaint of late especially in pvp is that roster strength can't help you when the ppl in your bracket have far worse mmr and rosters than you. You should be fighting ppl of near your point total in pvp regardless of mmr. As it is right now there isn't any incentive to improve your roster for pvp when I see ppl with character at max lol 50 as their top with 700+ rating that there is no chance of me getting to attack.

Unknown

I sometimes have fun losing when I feel like I have a fighting chance, rather then slamming my head against a ever growing brick wall.
it's also a problem with the amount of content available, since the amount is limited to events for all those who finished the prolog, brick walling events with max level enemies drains all the fun of the game and makes you feel like there's nothing you can do.
in the end, the game doesn't balance the fun feeling of challenge right and it ends up feeling like they have no chance, and that's not fun.

Unknown

wirius wrote:

Now they try to bracket the tournaments accordingly so that you're around people of similar competitiveness.

This is incorrect. You are bracketed based on when you join. So as Copps mentioned, you could be in a bracket with Day 1 beginners as well as Day 90 veterans.

It's really tough to balance a tourney for beginners and veterans in terms of difficulty, progression, and rewards. I think the Devs are doing the best they can. Impossible to please everyone in this type of game.

Unknown

And that someone should be the player who plays the worst. Playing bad shouldn't be rewarded with more points.

Level scaling is fine--if points scale with it. I understand the reason for scaling so the worse players can beat the missions too, but they shouldn't be getting the same points or rewards as the better players.

Give them means to acquire points, but don't just hand it out for no effort involved.

Unknown

I feel like the existence of a thread where a newbie player is complaining that he is getting too many 3*s is probably a sign that they've tilted the balance too far in the wrong direction.

Unknown

I've done fairly well in these scaling events, probably found it easier to position well in fact, but definitely found them less fun. I've got in top few positions in sub-sections of scaling events, since many other people without 4/5 blue spider-man struggle vs the high level enemies. The longer time to kill enemies means it actually requires more time grinding (but fewer missions completed) to get prizes rather than less.

wirius

So you're saying the way you're losing is poor. What is your alternative? Remember, it can't be designed so that everyone wins, its needs to be designed so that:

Someone's gotta lose.

Unknown

I've enjoyed this event way more than TaT and Heroic Oscorp. I also accept that sometimes I will not win. I am also an adult.

MarvelMan

There are somewhat two issues here: 1) the scaling of the opponents and 2) the rankings.

1) The ramp, especially in TaT, was WAY, WAY too steep. Its gotten much better but there could be a little bit of tweaking. Right now, to me, having the cumulative scaling means that if opponents all scale its more effective on some (Daken anyone?) than others (looking at Invisible (bag)Woman). In general, they have done a great job in this event of fixing that.

2) This gets me. Looking at PVE and PVP, people without maxed 2* or even a 3* leveled past 28 should NOT be in the top 10 spots. They should be finishing up their 2*s and therefore should be in the 25-75 ranges of the brackets. Its a bad thing for them (which kind of includes me) as they get covers they cant really use yet while keeping them away from the people who actually are transitioning to 3*.

Now that they have gotten 1) mostly undercontrol I would like to see their efforts focused on 2) rather than the fine tuning of 1). Part of that is that I think that 2) involves fixes to MMR which I look forward to. Ive gotten into PVP loops where I see the same dozen people over and over while skipping, and they only worth 9-16 points (and one had a 128 punisher with a 115 IM40: too hard for no reward).

Unknown

Aside from one sub bracket the lowest I placed in TaT was #3 so I'm not seeing a problem. Though of course this is exactly what he's talking about. If I won all my bracket and sub brackets, that means everyone else lost theirs if they're in the same one as me, and only one guy can win.

Unknown

wirius wrote:

Been seeing a few complaints about PvE scaling and guys, I'm here to tell you:

Someone's gotta lose.

True for PvP, and more people could stand to remember it, but not exactly for PvE. You can make placement awards minor and put all the focus on progression, then anyone who does the grinding gets the whatever. Oscorp did it.

Doing it on placement is easier for Demiurge, because they just set the awards to 1% of players winning (0.5% in the Hulks) and they're done. Problem with doing it on progression is that they still want only 1% of players reaching the highest awards and set the grind goals accordingly. They can get this wrong, and people will complain when they can't get there, even if they get it right, which brings us back to your point.

More people also have a problem with not getting what they want for reasons they perceive to be unfair, though it's admittedly hard to distinguish that from simple griping that you're not getting enough free stuff. Scaling and MMR are widely believed (doesn't much matter if it's true) to be favoring people with underdeveloped rosters, and we now have what's been dubbed "community scaling" and rubber-banding applying arbitrary differences in challenge and points received to PvE according to when you do it - these don't cancel out, it's just another thing to worry about if you're trying to optimize. Most people who lag behind would prefer to believe the system's gypped them out of their shinies than that they weren't going to get them, in the first place.

Unknown

I really want that 8k ISO progression but I know that, realistically, I will not likely achieve that threshold.
Won't stop me from trying, though.

Unknown

A similar design question is "Who do you reward?"
Should you reward people who play the most hours total? People who play at the right times? People who have the best characters? People who have certain characters? People who have skill at the game? People who have worse rosters?

Anytime you decide to reward one of these groups, you automatically make the other criteria less important. I would say 75% of complaints on this board are of the form, "I am in one of these groups, but you reward a different group too much."

Unknown

wirius wrote:

Been seeing a few complaints about PvE scaling and guys, I'm here to tell you:
Someone's gotta lose.

My problem is, your statement would be totally correct for PvP, but not PvE. People shouldn't "have to lose" in a PvE situation. We're explicitly playing against the computer, which should be the one to lose. Demiurge can put out more Events like the Prologue, where I can play at my own pace and not worry about rankings or timings or refreshes or anything else. But instead we have scaling and brackets.

Unknown

Driscon wrote:

wirius wrote:

Been seeing a few complaints about PvE scaling and guys, I'm here to tell you:
Someone's gotta lose.

My problem is, your statement would be totally correct for PvP, but not PvE. People shouldn't "have to lose" in a PvE situation. We're explicitly playing against the computer, which should be the one to lose. Demiurge can put out more Events like the Prologue, where I can play at my own pace and not worry about rankings or timings or refreshes or anything else. But instead we have scaling and brackets.

This. This is one of the main reasons I wish that episodes, after an initial run, would just have all competitive aspects stripped out and added next to the prologue. If this game had enough persistent PVE I'd never even bother with PVP; I didn't start playing it for the PVP, and I only signed up for it, reluctantly, eventually, because I realized the game simply doesn't have enough content otherwise.

Eddiemon

Driscon wrote:

wirius wrote:

Been seeing a few complaints about PvE scaling and guys, I'm here to tell you:
Someone's gotta lose.

My problem is, your statement would be totally correct for PvP, but not PvE. People shouldn't "have to lose" in a PvE situation. We're explicitly playing against the computer, which should be the one to lose. Demiurge can put out more Events like the Prologue, where I can play at my own pace and not worry about rankings or timings or refreshes or anything else. But instead we have scaling and brackets.

There are two ways of defining 'have to lose' here.

Firstly there is the tournament aspect. In order for the reward structure to work there have to be winners and losers. But everyone gets stuff. Nobody actually ends up worse off at the end, so nobody actually loses anything. 'Please don't give me stuff so I can prevent them from getting stuff' isn't a healthy outlook.

Secondly there are losers of individual battles. If they get the challenge level right then there is a degree of difficulty. Demiurge want that so they can justify rewards like 5000 ISO for a battle. If you can't beat that battle though there is still a relatively easy 7000 ISO to be picked up per map in 500 and 250 rewards. Plus there are progression rewards. Yet again, nobody is losing anything, everyone is gaining stuff.

You can play this at you own pace and not worry about scaling or brackets and just do the missions you can do and be happy with the results you achieve. You're not or end to try to compete or to clear every level. But that isn't going to work as long as you define your success by what someone else gets.

Unknown

Eddiemon wrote:

Driscon wrote:

wirius wrote:

Been seeing a few complaints about PvE scaling and guys, I'm here to tell you:
Someone's gotta lose.

My problem is, your statement would be totally correct for PvP, but not PvE. People shouldn't "have to lose" in a PvE situation. We're explicitly playing against the computer, which should be the one to lose. Demiurge can put out more Events like the Prologue, where I can play at my own pace and not worry about rankings or timings or refreshes or anything else. But instead we have scaling and brackets.

There are two ways of defining 'have to lose' here.

Firstly there is the tournament aspect. In order for the reward structure to work there have to be winners and losers. But everyone gets stuff. Nobody actually ends up worse off at the end, so nobody actually loses anything. 'Please don't give me stuff so I can prevent them from getting stuff' isn't a healthy outlook.

Secondly there are losers of individual battles. If they get the challenge level right then there is a degree of difficulty. Demiurge want that so they can justify rewards like 5000 ISO for a battle. If you can't beat that battle though there is still a relatively easy 7000 ISO to be picked up per map in 500 and 250 rewards. Plus there are progression rewards. Yet again, nobody is losing anything, everyone is gaining stuff.


You can play this at you own pace and not worry about scaling or brackets and just do the missions you can do and be happy with the results you achieve. You're not or end to try to compete or to clear every level. But that isn't going to work as long as you define your success by what someone else gets.

Bravo!!!! +1

wirius

Ben Grimm wrote:

Driscon wrote:

wirius wrote:

Been seeing a few complaints about PvE scaling and guys, I'm here to tell you:
Someone's gotta lose.

My problem is, your statement would be totally correct for PvP, but not PvE. People shouldn't "have to lose" in a PvE situation. We're explicitly playing against the computer, which should be the one to lose. Demiurge can put out more Events like the Prologue, where I can play at my own pace and not worry about rankings or timings or refreshes or anything else. But instead we have scaling and brackets.

This. This is one of the main reasons I wish that episodes, after an initial run, would just have all competitive aspects stripped out and added next to the prologue. If this game had enough persistent PVE I'd never even bother with PVP; I didn't start playing it for the PVP, and I only signed up for it, reluctantly, eventually, because I realized the game simply doesn't have enough content otherwise.

Hm, so you want direct PvE then? Well the game isn't designed for it. The PvE aspect is about achievable awards. They'll throw you bones up to a point, but after that, you have to compete or buy those rewards. If they simply supplied pve, you would do it, and be done with it. Everyone would have the same rewards, and you would be stuck right where you began.

"But allow all rewards through pve" you might add. Sure, they could do a daily pve grind, but to keep it competitive with pvp, and keep people playing pvp, they would have to make it a HELL grind.

Is that fun? I don't think so. Further, pvp people would probably feel they would NEED to do the PvE portion, adding too much demand from health packs, and causing the casual game to become more grind again.

Remember, the game isn't designed so that someone can win, its designed so that:

Someone's gotta lose.

Unknown

wirius wrote:

Is that fun? I don't think so.

Different things are fun for different people. If I could play 10 minutes here, 10 minutes there not having to worry about stack refreshes or what someone else is doing and KNOW I'm working my way towards a cover I want, I'd be MUCH more satisfied with this game than I currently am (note, I do still enjoy it, I would just prefer this).

Do I like having to set an alarm to make sure I catch the end of an event so I have better control of my placement? Oh course not! Do I like the fact I feel I have to figure out the meta for an event in order to be remotely competent in it? Nope. If that is fun for you, awesome, I'm glad you like it. I don't.

Unknown

Eddiemon wrote:

Driscon wrote:

wirius wrote:

Been seeing a few complaints about PvE scaling and guys, I'm here to tell you:
Someone's gotta lose.

My problem is, your statement would be totally correct for PvP, but not PvE. People shouldn't "have to lose" in a PvE situation. We're explicitly playing against the computer, which should be the one to lose. Demiurge can put out more Events like the Prologue, where I can play at my own pace and not worry about rankings or timings or refreshes or anything else. But instead we have scaling and brackets.

There are two ways of defining 'have to lose' here.

Firstly there is the tournament aspect. In order for the reward structure to work there have to be winners and losers. But everyone gets stuff. Nobody actually ends up worse off at the end, so nobody actually loses anything. 'Please don't give me stuff so I can prevent them from getting stuff' isn't a healthy outlook.

Secondly there are losers of individual battles. If they get the challenge level right then there is a degree of difficulty. Demiurge want that so they can justify rewards like 5000 ISO for a battle. If you can't beat that battle though there is still a relatively easy 7000 ISO to be picked up per map in 500 and 250 rewards. Plus there are progression rewards. Yet again, nobody is losing anything, everyone is gaining stuff.

You can play this at you own pace and not worry about scaling or brackets and just do the missions you can do and be happy with the results you achieve. You're not or end to try to compete or to clear every level. But that isn't going to work as long as you define your success by what someone else gets.

Except that players also want to play the game. It's not all about getting top 5 and stacking covers, it's about that never ending treadmill of feeling like you're "progressing" in some way as you play. You don't get that "perception" of progression when you're fighting "one step forward, three steps back" PVP battles or suddenly the event you WERE having fun in suddenly drops an insurmountable wall on you because of community scaling. That perception is why those mechanics are unpopular - they demotivate and prevent the player from playing the game - not because people imagine that somehow they'd be raking in the 4 star covers if only that pesky scaling wasn't in the way.

You're right in that the OP has it completely backwards: NOBODY'S gotta lose and nobody DOES lose, except maybe the guy who spend real dollars on boosts and shields that he wasted in vain. But the carrot of progression and ranking rewards should be dangled in front of the player, even newbie players, not sealed in a vault.